The house that Derek Ram­say painstak­ingly built for him­self mea­sures nearly 600 square me­ters. It has two floors and four bed­rooms. His bed­room oc­cu­pies half of the sec­ond floor, but this is not where he spends most of his time. He’s usu­ally all over the place to check on things.

With Derek are four of his five dogs: (L‑R) Shakira, an English bull­dog; Low­fat, a Pomera­nian; Habibi, a Bi­chon Frise; and Riri, a corgi. “The house that I built in Ala­bang, that was me from the ground up ta­laga,” Derek Ram­say an­nounced back in April 2017, when he was show­ing the YES! team around his fam­ily’s beach­front prop­erty in the town of San Vi­cente, Palawan. Derek was our cover star in June that year.

One late morn­ing in Au­gust 2017, four months af­ter that out-of-town as­sign­ment, we visit Derek’s house in an ex­clu­sive vil­lage lo­cated just out­side Barangay Ala­bang in Muntinlupa City. The 41-year-old ac­tor, ath­lete, and prod­uct en­dorser is out play­ing golf with fel­low ac­tor and golfer John Estrada. But he has thought­fully in­structed his house­keeper, Marissa Sevil­lano, to let us in, so we can start shoot­ing parts of his house. Later, we par­take of the sump­tu­ous lunch that Marissa has pre­pared, along with the take­out food that we’ve brought to the photo shoot.

We ad­mir­ingly look around, and re­call Derek’s fas­tid­i­ous ap­proach to su­per­vis­ing house con­struc­tion and in­te­rior de­sign.

“Me­dyo maarte ako when it comes to stuff like that,” he told us in Palawan last year. “You’ll see it in my house sa Ala­bang also. Do’n, it was just me in charge, so­brang makikita mo that ev­ery­thing is in per­fect order. Parang ’yong light switch has to be per­fectly straight, or if there are lit­tle things na nakikita kong mali, pina­paulit ko. So, I’m not scared of telling the work­ers to do it all over again. Basta I want it done right, and I guess I got that from my mom.”

In­deed, the celebrity home­owner’s metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to de­tail is seen and felt all over his Ala­bang do­main. Ev­ery spot is per­fect for a shot, and any decor item is a con­ver­sa­tional piece.

But the over­all look doesn’t in­tim­i­date. It’s ac­tu­ally invit­ing, for in­stance, to sit on the ex­pen­sive-look­ing sofa, couch, and chairs, or maybe to hang out in the den on the ground floor and in the foyer on the sec­ond floor. A dip in the pool may prove to be ir­re­sistible, too.

Derek ar­rives by mid-af­ter­noon with his girl­friend Joanne Vil­l­ablanca, who lives with him. He tells us he needs to freshen up, but nev­er­the­less starts giv­ing us a run­down of what’s in­side and out­side, some of which he de­scribes in par­tic­u­lar, while oth­ers he men­tions in pass­ing. Some­times, he turns to Joanne and asks her to help him re­mem­ber the de­tails.

Af­ter a quick trip to the shower, the good-look­ing ac­tor, who shuns makeup and fash­ion styling, is ready to pose for his por­traits wear­ing his own shirt-and­shorts en­sem­bles. Then, he tours us around his two-story prop­erty, which mea­sures close to 600 square me­ters.

He was still liv­ing in his old digs in the neigh­bor­ing city of Parañaque when he dis­cov­ered this place in Ala­bang.

“I was just driv­ing around,” he re­counts. “I get some sort of peace driv­ing around and look­ing at houses.”

That was early in 2015. He had al­ready bought a 1,600-square-me­ter lot in Nu­vali, which is de­scribed on its web­site as “an eco-city de­vel­op­ment” in La­guna prov­ince. He was ready to build his dream house there. But he changed his mind when he found this Ala­bang house, which was un­der con­struc­tion at that time.

Derek re­calls get­ting down from his car and telling the work­ers: “Stop, I’ll buy it as is.”

He did just that two days later, buy­ing it from a man who’s into build­ing and sell­ing houses.

Right away, he shared his vi­sion with the con­struc­tion team, and he later guided them in turning that vi­sion into re­al­ity. He did so while he was neck- deep in work that year, tap­ing for his two shows for his home net­work, TV5 (the re­al­ity-TV show Ex­treme Se­ries: Kaya Mo Ba ’To? and the sit­com Mac & Chiz, op­po­site Em­poy), and film­ing for his for­mer net­work ABS- CBN’s moviemak­ing arm, Star Cin­ema (the ro­mance- drama with Coleen Gar­cia, Ex with Ben­e­fits, and the en­sem­ble piece All You Need Is Pag-ibig).

Since mid-2016, Derek has been liv­ing in his Ala­bang house, which has be­come a show­case for his re­cently dis­cov­ered but rapidly de­vel­op­ing in­ter­est and tal­ent in home and in­te­rior de­sign.

his machismo ap­peal and ath­letic pur­suits. “Kasi, no’ng bata ako, wala akong pakialam sa mga ganyan. Be­fore, it was sports and cars. Now, I don’t even care about cars. I don’t use them. Now, I like buy­ing mag­a­zines about houses.”

Though he gets ideas from mag­a­zines and other re­sources, Derek has his own ways of bring­ing those to fruition. He points to the walls. “Ito, akala mo, mar­ble?” he asks us. “Se­mento lang ’to! Wi­nax. Masilya, then you seal it with wax. And then wax, and then wax, and then wax. Me­dyo ma­tra­baho, pero if you no­ticed, may perime­ter wall. Pi­na­ganyan ko, kaya di ku­makapit ’yong dumi… Basta, lay­ers and lay­ers of wax.” He ges­tures up­wards. “You won’t no­tice, but may ac­cent lights sila,” he tells us. “Cheap lang, S&R [a mem­ber­ship-shop­ping club]. May re­mote ako. Even at night, it lights up at the back, and you stay there. Magic!”

And he picks up the re­mote from its slot. “This is the re­mote. It has a timer. You just press it, and even un­der­neath that ta­ble there, it lights up. Ac­cent lights. Light is key.”

Derek says ideas just pop into his head, and the ones that he pur­sues fol­low his num­ber one rule: “Ayaw ko ng may ka­pareho.” He fol­lows the same rule when find­ing fur­ni­ture and fur­nish­ings—a prac­tice that drives Joanne, whom he calls by her nick­name Jo, crazy.

“‘Parang I re­call see­ing some­thing that I know can work, and I wanna go back kahit di ako sure.’

“Masi­pag ta­laga ako, and stress re­liever siya— to look at fur­ni­ture and then mag­a­zines.”

Derek is en­joy­ing his new­found pas­sion, so much so that he now mulls over the idea of build­ing an ex­ten­sion to his prop­erty. “Gusto ko ngang bil­hin ’yong across the street. I wanna buy that, tear that house down, and then make it into a parang garage and game area.”

Then there’s his Nu­vali lot, which, he proudly re­ports, has passed the soil bor­ing tests—that is, tests made by en­gi­neers to de­ter­mine, among other things, the abil­ity of the soil to sup­port struc­tures.

“The wall of my movie room is a swim­ming pool, and my garage’s wall is the swim­ming pool. So, you can see the cars when you’re swim­ming, and then, dou­ble-sided glass siya. It’s an aquar­ium and a swim­ming pool. When you’re in the pool, it looks like you’re swim­ming with the fish. And then two wings siya. Big pool in the mid­dle, parang beach style.

“Crazy house! There’s a bridge there to con­nect the two wings. But I told them to take the bridge out. So­bra na­man ’yong bridge.”

But Derek’s hous­ing plans don’t end there. He’s also look­ing into Ta­gay­tay City, where his par­ents live, to build a bun­ga­low that “ex­tends off the cliff.” His in­spi­ra­tion for his fu­ture project is the Casa Till (or Till House) built by the Latin Amer­i­can ar­chi­tec­tural firm WMR Arqui­tec­tos on the cliffs of the Los Ar­cos area in Chile.

The ac­tor turns pen­sive when asked if he sees him­self get­ting into the busi­ness of build­ing and sell­ing houses. He then men­tions a fa­mous Amer­i­can TV host who en­gages in such an en­ter­prise: Ellen DeGeneres.

Ac­cord­ing to her own book, Home, re­leased in 2015, the in­ter­na­tion­ally known talk-show host “has bought and ren­o­vated nearly a dozen homes over the last twenty-five years, and de­scribes her real-es­tate and dec­o­rat­ing ad­ven­tures as ‘an ed­u­ca­tion.’”

Derek is thrilled at the thought of fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Ellen DeGeneres.

“Para akong bata,” he ad­mits. “Nae‑ex­cite ta­laga ’ko, e. I’m en­ter­ing a world that I know I en­joy, but I’m gonna make a lot of mis­takes. So, I have to think this through, and I re­ally need to find some­body whom I can trust, who’ll guide me through it. It’s not some­thing I could just jump into, kaya I’m prac­tic­ing on my own stuff for now. So, when I make that in­vest­ment and make a house to sell to some­body… We’ll see. But again, I don’t think it’s go­ing to hap­pen overnight.”

SPORTS & SHOW­BIZ

An al­ter­nate ca­reer that Derek may con­sider is that of a pro­fes­sional golf player.

“It’s kinda late at the age of forty to jump into the pro level, but noth­ing is im­pos­si­ble,” he says. “So I’ll try to put down that I was once a pro­fes­sional, even if it was just for a year or two. But it’s just for the game of golf I love—even if I don’t reach the pro level, at least when I get my hand­i­cap down to al­most a pro, and I’m get­ting there slowly.”

Since mov­ing into his Ala­bang house in 2016, the ac­tor has starred in three movies—the rom-com Love Is Blind (Re­gal Films), with his ex-girl­friend, Solenn Heussaff; the sex- drama The Es­cort (also Re­gal Films), with Ka­puso ac­tress Lovi Poe; and an­other rom-com, My Can­di­date (Quan­tum Films), with Ka­pam­ilya ac­tress Shaina Mag­dayao. But Derek doesn’t have a reg­u­lar TV show.

The con­tract star of TV5 ex­plains his ab­sence from the small screen: “I made a deal with my­self na I think it’s fair na I con­cen­trate on what else I’m pas­sion­ate about, and that’s my sports.”

This time, he’s talk­ing about Fris­bee, specif­i­cally the World Cham­pi­onships of Beach Ul­ti­mate (WCBU), which took place from June 18 to 24, 2017, in the re­sort town of Royan, France.

“Yeah, it was a big risk for me to take six months off to con­cen­trate on my sports. But I think that’s fair enough to me. I need to be fair to my­self, and I want to bal­ance ev­ery­thing that I have. I’ll never be able to go back to the World Cham­pi­onships if I didn’t do it then. I wouldn’t have the op­por­tu­nity to compete again at the high­est level of the sport that I love, and I’d be just de­pressed. I’ll al­ways tell my­self, ‘What

if?’ So I told my­self I’ll do it, and hope­fully I’ve given enough to the in­dus­try for the peo­ple to still re­mem­ber and love me when I come back.”

Derek and his Fris­bee team scored 14 wins against two losses in the com­pe­ti­tion, but their ef­forts still didn’t earn them a slot in the fi­nals.

He found so­lace when, upon re­turn­ing home in July, he led the open­ing rites of The Bar­racks, the food park that his fam­ily owns in Ta­gay­tay, and peo­ple greeted him with ex­cite­ment. He re­mem­bered feel­ing “so much love” and get­ting con­stantly asked, ‘Ke­lan ka gagawa ng movie? We miss you on the big screen.”

A month later, in early Au­gust, just a few days be­fore the YES! house shoot, Derek went to Cebu for a store visit at an SM mall in sup­port of the Lee cloth­ing line that he en­dorses, and he was again over­whelmed by the warm wel­come he got there.

“Na­palunok ako ta­laga,” he tells us, re­call­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence with fond­ness. “I didn’t know what to say to the Ce­buanos. They haven’t been see­ing me on TV, and if you don’t get seen on TV, nalalaos ka. Like, punong-puno ’yong SM, and they had twenty guards and bounc­ers to hold the crowd back. But I said I com­pletely ap­pre­ci­ate the love and sup­port they give me. Pag nakakakita ka ng gano’n, maeeng­ganyo ka ta­laga mag­tra­baho. You just get so pumped up and mo­ti­vated to work and do some­thing to make them happy.”

Shortly af­ter that Cebu trip, Derek re­ceived a call from lawyer and film pro­ducer Joji Alonso, who bankrolled his hit movie op­po­site Jen­ny­lyn Mer­cado, English Only, Please. That movie was a top-gross­ing en­try in the 2014 Metro Manila Film Fes­ti­val (MMFF). It also won the best ac­tor and best ac­tress awards for Derek and Jen­ny­lyn.

Derek was sub­se­quently of­fered by At­tor­ney Joji to take over Jeri­cho Ros­ales’s role as Jen­ny­lyn’s lead­ing man in an en­try in the 2017 MMFF. He said yes, and went on to re­unite with Jen­ny­lyn in a movie helmed by their English Only, Please di­rec­tor, Dan Vil­le­gas. The movie, All of You, hit the­aters last Christ­mas Day, and fared fairly well at the tills. It also gave Derek his sec­ond best ac­tor tro­phy from the MMFF.

On Jan­uary 9, 2018, Derek posted on IG a photo of his first shoot­ing day for a movie with the work­ing ti­tle Kasal. Among those with him in the photo taken on the movie set were his di­rec­tor, Ruel Bayani, and his costars, Bea Alonzo and Paulo Avelino.

Derek told YES! about this bigscreen project as early as April 2017, while we were in Palawan. He was de­lighted about be­ing re­united with Bea, whom he had worked with in two movies, One More Chance (2006) and And I Love You So (2009), and in two tele­seryes, Mag­ing Sino Ka Man: Ang Pag­ba­ba­lik (2007) and Magkaribal (2010). He also looked for­ward to be­ing di­rected again by Direk Ruel, who helmed No Other Woman, Derek’s 2011 block­buster with Anne Cur­tis and Cris­tine Reyes.

Kasal cre­ated buzz less than two months be­fore film­ing be­gan when ABSCBN, the par­ent com­pany of the movie’s pro­duc­tion out­fit, Star Cin­ema, is­sued a state­ment through its TV and on­line af­fil­i­ates. The state­ment, dated Novem­ber 17, 2017, said: “ABS-CBN wel­comes back Derek Ram­say who will soon work with Bea Alonzo in the film ‘Kasal’ un­der Star Cin­ema. ABS-CBN’s top man­age­ment and Derek have met re­cently and re­solved the is­sues aris­ing from his trans­fer to an­other net­work five years ago.”

Kitchen

“Ito, ako nag-de­sign,” Derek an­nounces as he leads the YES! team into the kitchen, which has top-of-the-line ap­pli­ances and im­ple­ments. But what’s im­pres­sive is the way this area is kept clean and or­ga­nized. “Ev­ery­thing is con­cealed,” he ex­plains.

Soon, there were talks of Derek’s re­turn to ABS- CBN af­ter leav­ing TV5. Derek cleared the is­sue on De­cem­ber 1, when he met with web­site news re­porters and in­di­vid­ual blog­gers for a blog­con, or blog­gers’ con­fer­ence, to pro­mote All of You. He did so by down­play­ing the meet­ing he had with the Ka­pam­ilya net­work’s top man­age­ment, in­clud­ing Malou San­tos, Cory Vi­danes, and Gabby Lopez.

“It’s more of we fi­nally had that talk that was long over­due to squash what­ever it is that hap­pened,” he said at the blog­con, as quoted by PEP.ph, the on­line af­fil­i­ate of YES! “It’s a cour­tesy call. I got to speak with Tita Malou, Tita Cory, Gabby Lopez… Kasi it is a big thing, and we never had clo­sure. So I vented out why, and they vented out why. It was just like a bunch of friends na nagkatam­puhan, and we walked out there re­lieved, and to look for­ward—which is this

movie with Bea and Paulo, which will start off in Jan­uary. It’s a big project.”

He also pointed out that he’s stay­ing put in his home net­work: “I am still un­der con­tract with TV5, so my loy­alty is with TV5. My con­tract ex­pires April of 2018, so they have all of me, and I’m gonna give a hun­dred per­cent to TV5 be­cause I am com­mit­ted to them… Af­ter that, if they still want my ser­vices, then I will give them that re­spect, and siyem­pre, sila pa rin ’yong pri­or­ity. But if not, I’ll see what hap­pens.”

YES! gets in touch with Derek via the Viber mes­sag­ing app to fol­low up on the topic in time for this ar­ti­cle. He replies on Fe­bru­ary 9 with this mes­sage: “My con­tract comes to an end april.”

SET­TLING DOWN

Derek’s Ala­bang house is abuzz with ac­tiv­ity on the day of the YES! photo shoot. We fol­low Derek around as he shares bits and pieces about this and that de­tail in his res­i­dence.

We ask him to pose for pho­tos in dif­fer­ent spots, in­clud­ing on a patch of grass just out­side the gate, where we shoot him with his ca­nine com­pan­ions— Shakira, an English bull­dog; Habibi, a Bi­chon Frise; Low­fat, a Pomera­nian; Riri, a corgi; and Tyson, an­other English bull­dog.

Late in the af­ter­noon, his col­league and golf buddy John Estrada turns up to catch up with John’s old pal, Anna Pin­gol, YES! Mag­a­zine’s manag­ing ed­i­tor. John and Anna oc­cupy one side of the din­ing ta­ble, while Derek’s girl­friend Joanne and her brother Jose Vil­l­ablanca, who had come ear­lier, take the other side.

Joanne, 28, is a com­mer­cial model and a fit­ness buff. She’s a sin­gle mom with a 10-year-old daugh­ter named So­phie, whom Derek dotes on. The lit­tle girl has her own room in Derek’s house, but she’s not around on the day of the YES! shoot. “Nasa dad niya,” Joanne tells us, when asked about So­phie. The lit­tle girl spends half of her time with ei­ther of her par­ents.

Derek con­tin­ues with the photo shoot and in­ter­view. Ev­ery now and then, he talks to ei­ther John or Joanne. He also checks on his dogs, which his house helpers keep in the back area so as not to in­ter­fere with the shoot.

Though he loves ev­ery bit of this house, Derek doesn’t see him­self rais­ing a fam­ily here.

“If I’m gonna set­tle down, I’d rather have a more open house, with more open space where my dogs can run freely and

The foyer on the sec­ond floor says a lot about the home­owner’s flair for mix­ing and match­ing fur­nish­ings (above and right pho­tos).

To coun­ter­bal­ance the mus­tard seat that he bought from the Casabella fur­ni­ture shop— “Such a mas­cu­line couch, lalak­eng-lalake”— Derek got a stool that’s called a Mochi Ball, be­cause it looks and feels as soft as the Ja­panese pas­try of that name. Then he placed a huge suit­case in the cen­ter to re­mind him of the by­gone era of his lola. Fi­nally, he put to­gether, on a high shelf, a trio of paint­ings of adult-movie per­form­ers Maria Ozawa, Sasha Grey, and a Rus­sian porn star (whose name es­capes him dur­ing the YES! shoot), along with an ac­tion fig­ure of the su­per­hero ti­tle char­ac­ter that he played on the tele­serye Kid­lat (bot­tom-right photo).

A few steps from the foyer, Solenn’s other paint­ing is dis­played on the wall (cen­ter-right photo). Derek says his ex gave it to him on his birth­day in De­cem­ber 2016. “Solenn’s very close not just to me but to my whole fam­ily,” he says of his lead­ing lady in the rom-com Love Is Blind, which was also re­leased in 2016. my [fu­ture] kids can play with them,” he points out. The ac­tor’s only child so far, a boy named Austin, now 14 years old, stays in Dubai, the United Arab Emi­rates, with Derek’s es­tranged wife.

“As you can see, I don’t think this is a house for kids. So, I’d have to child­proof it a lit­tle bit more for lit­tle kids. But with So­phie, she en­joys it here. She loves play­ing around here. She has her friends over, and they swim. Pero ’yong maliliit na bata, mga de­likado pa. So, def­i­nitely, if I’m gonna start my fam­ily, it has to be some­thing more open.”

He goes on de­scrib­ing his dream fam­ily home: “I’m a fan of bun­ga­low houses, so I like some­thing sprawl­ing and more open. Safer for kids. There has to be a very big gar­den… And I don’t know kung sa’n ako ha­hanap ng prop­erty. Hindi na­man sa ayoko ng kapit­ba­hay, ayoko lang ’yong cramped. I don’t like hav­ing a perime­ter wall or a front gate. But I don’t know, maybe I’ll chance upon a prop­erty, and do that.”

Sud­denly, he re­mem­bers his siz­able lot out of town: “My prop­erty in Nu­vali is a cul- de-sac, so maybe I could do it there. Ev­ery­thing na­man is mov­ing to the South, so, hope­fully, the plan is to be re­tired and spend time with my fam­ily.”

“Siyem­pre, pag may tamang project for a movie, I’ll def­i­nitely con­sider it,” he points out. “You think about th­ese things na your pri­or­i­ties change. But my pas­sion for act­ing and the in­dus­try will never change. It’s still there. We have chap­ters in our life, and it’s time for me maybe in the not-so- dis­tant fu­ture to go into that chap­ter. We’ll see.”

A wide grin ap­pears on his ruggedly hand­some face when he’s asked if he sees him­self set­tling down with Joanne, who’s been with him for the last three years.

“Yeah!” he replies. “I mean, why would I be in this re­la­tion­ship if I didn’t, di ba? You clearly see that I share ev­ery­thing with her, and how much I adore and love her daugh­ter, so it would be a com­plete waste of time. And ha­bang tu­matanda ka, your time gets shorter, so it would be a com­plete waste of time to be com­mit­ted to some­body with­out look­ing at your fu­ture to­gether. So most def­i­nitely, it will hap­pen in the next three to five years.”

The in­flu­ence of Derek’s mom is most felt in this room— specif­i­cally, in the choice of a clas­sic rug (top) and in the col­lec­tion of re­li­gious items (in­set).
Two more women have to­kens of re­mem­brance here: Vir­gie Ramos, whose com­pany dis­trib­utes the...

Fram­ing the din­ing area are three items that Derek refers to as “talk­ing pieces” (that is, con­ver­sa­tion pieces): a sculp­ture of a seated man (left), a bull head that the home­owner stum­bled upon in a Pa­song Tamo shop (right, top), and an au­dio­vi­sual...

The elec­tric bike that Derek proudly owns and dis­plays in the liv­ing area is a Scram­bler unit man­u­fac­tured by the U.S. com­pany Vin­tage Elec­tric.
It’s de­scribed on Vin­tage Elec­tric’s web­site as the “ul­ti­mate elec­tric ad­ven­ture bike in­spired by to­day’s...

Citrus col­ors, cour­tesy of the sofa set and book­case, give fresh am­biance to the liv­ing area. The sofa set is by the French fur­ni­ture brand Roche Bobois (left photo). It’s so comfy to sit on and quite con­ducive to sleep­ing.
Derek’s por­trait is part of...

The trans­par­ent bowl placed on the small­est glass ta­ble is the do­main of Derek’s pet tur­tle Michelan­gelo.